


Fighting Talk

by trace_of_scarlet



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Coulson Lives, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Nick Fury is a memetic badass, Pepper Potts is better than you, Tony Stark is a brat, We're All Mad Here, badassery, sometimes Bruce Banner is not completely emo, undercover agents, very grown-up agents of SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 16:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trace_of_scarlet/pseuds/trace_of_scarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who would win in a fight?" Darcy asks, and ducks as yet another fireball scorches past her head; she can hear <i>and</i> feel her hair frizzle, which is weirdly disconcerting. "Natasha or Thor?"</p><p>Even the Avengers have to ask the question... But they don't have to be entirely serious about how they answer it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by my favourite Eric. Entirely the fault of Rachel (herdivineshadow), so blame her and not me. ;)

"Who would win in a fight?" Darcy asks, and ducks as yet another fireball scorches past her head; she can hear _and_ feel her hair frizzle, which is weirdly disconcerting. "Natasha or Thor?"

They are crouched in the middle of a literal firefight between a bunch of dragons and a couple of stranded Norse gods who probably aren't total assholes when they're not drunk on basically an entire ren faire-worth of fake mead, but that time is not now and she thinks if she doesn't say _something_ she's going to go crazy with how scared she is.

"Current SHIELD betting pool's leaning towards Thor," Clint says tersely, and fits an arrow to his bow - though God only knows what he's going to find to use it on. "But my money's always been on Nat."

"Are you serious?" Coulson demands, although he's clearly trying to decide if they can make a break for it and if so, where to. "Where are we recruiting these people? It's _obviously_ Natasha."

"Yeah, I keep telling them," says Clint, ignoring his comm link as it crackles with unhelpful advice. "I think the, uh, big golden Norse labrador thing kinda dazzles them. What about Nat versus you, then, boss?"

"Stop calling me that," Coulson orders - at the same time as Darcy unhesitatingly says 'Natasha!' which makes her boss give her the mildly ironic raised eyebrows which are his equivalent of an eyeroll. "There's no loyalty these days," he grumbles. "Even if she _would_ break me."

Clint snorts his laughter. "Keep this up, you're gonna be making him coffee for the remainder of recorded time, kid." The idea is - kind of reassuring, actually, in that it suggests that there's going to be a remainder of recorded time _for_ her to fix people coffee in, which she hasn't exactly been all that confident about up til now. Still isn't, actually, but the senior agents' deadpan is a stabilising influence, at least... well, basically right until Coulson suddenly puts his game-face back on as a message comes through comms.

"Hill says Stark and Banner are incoming," he tells them. "Time to evac. before we wind up superhero-sandwiched."

The other two both nod, and when the dragonfire lets up they take their chances and run.

~*~

"Who would win in a fight?" Tony asks, and leans back against the wall with slightly more tiredness than he'd like to admit, actually. "Pepper or Coulson?"

They are in the labs at Stark Towers, trying to fix (and by 'fix' they mean, of course, improve) the destroyed upper levels of the building. Bruce has been getting tetchier and tetchier with every reminder of the Battle of New York, and Tony's persistent attempts to flirt him out of it have been getting nowhere. (Although he'll keep flirting as well anyway, because well, it's _Bruce_. Bruce is easily the hottest science genius Tony knows - except, obviously, for himself and maybe Thor's astrophysicist girlfriend Dr Foster.)

"Hmm?" Bruce peers at him over his spectacles, temporarily thrown off-track in slightly stressed-out nerding. "I - what?"

"Who would win in a fight?" Tony repeats, patiently. "Pepper or Coulson?"

"Ohhh." Bruce frowns as he catches up: apparently Tony isn't the only desperately-attractive polymath who can, at times, be monumentally dense. "Umm. What's the fight over?"

"I don't know, it was a spur-of-the-moment distraction technique." There is a smear of oil on Bruce's nose from all the times he's pushed his glasses up: Tony is finding it unusually distracting, although to be honest, ninety-nine percent of the time Tony finds basically the entire _world_ unusually distracting. "Me, I guess - whatever they'd be likely to fight over."

Bruce snorts, giving Tony that wryly amused look that with him does duty as a grin. "If it were over you, then I'm pretty sure _you'd_ be the one to come out on top. But otherwise, my money's on Pepper."

A breath whilst he reassesses. "Unless it was over those Captain America trading cards he likes so much, anyway."

"If it was a fight over trading cards, I'd think Phil could beat whole _armies_ of Norse gods, never mind me." Pepper steps out of the elevator, picking her stiletto-heeled way carefully through the mechanical clutter and debris. "But thank you for the vote of confidence, Dr. Banner."

She bestows upon Bruce a multi-million-dollar smile before turning to Tony with the benign, serene expression of the woman who knows he's going to whine about what she tells him next, but really doesn't care. "In related news, Tony, I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that Commander Hill is en route for your 10:30 meeting."

"-What?" Tony splutters, appalled at her treachery. "I absolutely did _not_ sanction that!"

"No, but I did." Pepper peeps at him angelically over her brand-new tablet. "And you were so busy the last three times I arranged it, I thought it would be much more convenient for her to come here instead. Happy's bringing her now."

Bruce can't help but chuckle at the look on Tony's face. "You might as well bow to the inevitable, Stark. The shiny science toys will mostly still be here when you get back."

"If there's anything left of me after," Tony grumbles, but allows Pepper to sheepdog him elegantly towards the elevator anyway, because even the great Tony Stark can recognise genuinely impossible odds when he sees them. (Well, sometimes, anyway - and the rest of the times he just tries to take a nuclear bomb into space or something equally sensible.)

" _Thank_ you, Doctor." Pepper favours him with another perfect mega-watt smile as she swishes past, even though they are all well aware that she has more competence in just one of her mirror-polished fingernails than the pair of them have exhibited in their entire lives. The elevator door goes 'ding' as it opens for the pair of them, and Bruce, for once in his life almost secure, turns back to his work with a smile of his own.

~*~

"Who would win in a fight?" Sitwell asks, and tries and fails abjectly to twirl his pen in his hand. "Thor or Cap?"

They are at fifty-thousand feet above ground in the most sophisticated air-carrier known to man, even if that man _is_ Tony Stark, and yet they both have so much paper on their desks that Health  & Safety are probably having a collective heart attack right now over the fire hazard. (Although it's probably without knowing why, since none of them have been back since Director Fury threatened to have one thrown out an airlock.) He feels instinctively that there is something very wrong with having all these forms in the middle of so much tech, like surely they should have a robot for this by now -- but whenever he tries to convince R&D of this, they just make Terminator references at him until he goes away.

Hill raises her eyebrows at him over the stack of folders on her desk. "Are you _really_ that bored of paperwork?"

"Yes," he says immediately, and pushes himself to his feet with a sigh. "Go on, ma'am, I'll get coffees. Thor versus Captain Rogers: who wins?"

"Well, definitely not the local architecture." She gives him an incredulous look, as if the fact that he's asking her a question like that is more unbelievable than all the crazy alien invasions in the universe (or even that one time Thor got turned into a puppy), but she still fishes her favourite coffee cup out from under the stacks of paper and holds it out to him. "Uh. Cap, I assume."

"Cap? Really? I know he's a war hero, but..."

"Rogers has beaten entire armies of Nazis, sixty years of polar ice, and a massed alien invasion of New York," she reminds him dryly. "Whereas Thor got taken out by a poli-sci major with a taser. Twice."

Sitwell snorts. "I really need to, uh, refresh my memory of those incidents," he says, hitting the temperamental office coffee machine at the precise thirty-three-degree angle necessary to make make it whirr into life. "Doesn't Coulson still have the footage somewhere?"

"Not on company time, agent." Hill shoots him an I-am-your-commanding-damn-officer frown from behind her computer screen. "You've still got those AFF101s to fill in from the Moldovan operation, haven't you?"

He deflates gently at her look and her tone. "Yes ma'am," he admits, and obediently sets her fresh coffee on the desk in front of her. "And CF142s as well."

She picks up her drink and sips appreciatively, raising her eyebrows in silent enquiry over the rim of her mug.

"There were hippos."

"Ohhh." Hill tucks a stray curl of black hair behind her ear with her free hand. "Well, I'd say you're going to be here for a while, then."

Sitwell sighs, because Coulson gets all the best jobs even if he gets all the worst ones, too. "Yes, ma'am."

He makes a concerted attempt on the paperwork after that, because he hasn't submitted any in a couple months and HR are starting to get the distinctly 'flooding your superior officer's inbox with infinite tiny complaints' style of tetchy, so it's a whole ten minutes before he looks up again to see Commander Hill switching on the giant video link-up on the far wall. True to form, however, it's barely a few seconds before she realises he's noticed what she's doing. (Perhaps it's a specialised form of radar, or maybe the power of Fury's glares have finally irradiated her and it's ESP.)

"Three conditions, Sitwell," she tells him, producing the remote from her desk drawer. "One: you personally see to it I never need to know about the betting pool I _know_ you all have going. Two: I want every one of those files submitted in full to Human Resources by twenty-one hundred hours tonight."

She tosses the remote to him, and he catches it with far more dexterity than he did his pen - useful, as it saves him from having to enquire exactly _which_ betting pool she's referring to.

"And three... Get the popcorn in, will you?"

~*~

_Who would win in a fight?_ Clint signs, though he shoots a glance back to their target's most likely exit point. _Fury or the Hulk?_

They are at a stupidly-priced café in one of the more exclusive districts of Berne, waiting for the most reclusive arms dealer in all of recorded history to finally show face for long enough to be quietly kidnapped for dealing in jerry-rigged alien weapons stolen during the Battle of New York.

Natasha gives him a blank look, although he can tell she is already calculating the complex physics and mathematics of such a fight in her head. _What?_

Even her signing is faintly incredulous.

 _It's a game,_ he answers, then amends it to _Not serious, anyway._

 _I know._ Her hands pause as someone moves inside the apartment, then flicker again. _But it's too easy to answer - obviously Fury would win._

Her eyes dance the way few people ever notice through the mask of Natalie Rushman or Nadia Rosskoff or whoever else she's being this week. _But I would still like to watch it happen._

He snorts, quietly enough that he can't actually hear it, although to be fair his hearing is so screwed these days that that's not actually saying all that much. He can tell, though, that whilst Nat might be capable of making jokes about the Hulk these days, it's probably not a subject they should hang around on.

 _Okay, then. Fury versus Fury?_ The name-sign for Fury is pretty distinctive and complex, but then it has a hell of a lot of things to convey.

Nat's eyes narrow. _Whichever gets Hill on side._ Hill's, on the other hand, is a lot simpler, and has a lot in common with the sign for 'hammer'. _If not, then M.A.D._

That makes him chuckle. _Good call._

All chatter stops for a few moments, whilst he checks their heat sensors and Nat fiddles with the radio. Their mysterious arms dealer has her children home from school today, which complicates things: they can't take them as well as their mother, but leaving them to raise the alarm could seriously jeopardise their exit - even if both he and Nat didn't already have kind of strong feelings on the subject of not traumatising small children unnecessarily. So he's pretty sure they're going to spend the day twiddling their thumbs, waiting for her to take the kids to their father's or her parents' place, which - from available evidence - is basically the only time she leaves the place anyway, so it's not like that comes as much of a surprise.

Red nail polish glints in the half-light as Nat's hands move to suggest drinks in the square outside while they wait; he tilts his head, considers their options, then nods. They pack their equipment away in silent unison: they've pulled enough of these jobs together over the years that their teamwork is basically seamless, and Nat, he can tell, has her mind on other things as she works.

It's not until they're outside, the tepid yellow sunlight of a mid-European spring evening on their backs like weak tea, that Nat tilts her head at him with Natalie Rushman's easy, self-contained curiosity.

"Okay. Who wins in a fight - Fury versus God?"

He can already taste the beer he's about to order, and the question amuses him, so he slides his free arm around her waist (which is permitted while they're posing as a couple - or even off-duty, if they can ever remember what that is) and lets himself smile.

"Man, Nat, and you said _my_ first one was easy? That fight happens every damn day."

"Oh, of course." She snickers, because it's true, and laughs against his side. "Remind me again whose side we're on in that fight?"

"Ours," Clint says firmly, and grins into the sun.

_Fin_


End file.
